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ASCII art

<graphics>

(Or "character graphics", "ASCII graphics") The fine art of drawing diagrams using the ASCII character set (mainly "|-/\+").

See also boxology. Here is a serious example:

   o----)||(--+--|<----+   +---------o + D O
     L  )||(  |        |   |             C U
   A I  )||(  +-->|-+  |   +-\/\/-+--o -   T
   C N  )||(        |  |   |      |        P
     E  )||(  +-->|-+--)---+--)|--+-o      U
        )||(  |        |          | GND    T
   o----)||(--+--|<----+----------+

   A power supply consisting of a full wave rectifier
   circuit feeding a capacitor input filter circuit

                         Figure 1.

And here are some very silly examples:

   |\/\/\/|     __/|              _    |\_/|    ___
   |      |     \ o.O|   ACK!      /   \_  |` '|  _/   \
   |      |      =(_)=  THPHTH!   /      \/     \/      \
   | (o)(o)        U             /                       \
   C      _)  ()                \/\/\/\  ___  /\/\/\/
   | ,___|    (oo)                       \/     \/
   |   /       \/-------\         U                  (__)
  /____\        ||     | \    /---V  `v'-            oo )
 /      \       ||---W||  *  * |--|   || |`.         |_/\

 	//-o-\\
  __---=======---__
     ====_\   /.. ..\   /_====      Klingons rule OK!
   //        ---\O/---        \\
   \_\                           /_/

 	 	    _
 	     ...---'-----`---...
 	       _===============================
  ,----------------._/'      `---...___...---'
  (___||_) . .  ,--'
      /    /.---'         `/
     '--------_- - - - - _/
        `--------'

 	    Figure 2.

There is an important subgenre of ASCII art that puns on the standard character names in the fashion of a rebus.

 +--------------------------------------------------------+
 |      ^^^^^^^^^^^^                                      |
 | ^^^^^^^^^^^            ^^^^^^^^^                       |
 |                 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^            ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ |
 |        ^^^^^^^         B       ^^^^^^^^^               |
 |  ^^^^^^^^^          ^^^            ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^      |
 +--------------------------------------------------------+
      "A Bee in the Carrot Patch"

                       Figure 3.

Within humorous ASCII art, there is, for some reason, an entire flourishing subgenre of pictures of silly cows. One is shown in Figure 2; here are three more:

   ()              ()              (__)
   (\/)              ($$)              (**)
   /-------\/        /-------\/        /-------\/
  / | 666 ||        / |=====||        / |     ||
 *  ||----||       *  ||----||       *  ||----||
    ~~    ~~          ~~    ~~          ~~    ~~
  Satanic cow    This cow is a Yuppie   Cow in love

 	   Figure 4.

http://gagme.wwa.com/~boba/scarecrow.html.

Last updated: 1996-02-06

Nearby terms:

ASCI ♦ ASCII ♦ ASCII art ♦ ASCIIbetical order ♦ ASCIIbonics ♦ ASCII character table

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